Hyun

My work and me

About Me

Hello, my name is Hyun — I am a designer and technologist creating symbiotic relationships between information and people. I am currently working with researchers, engineers and designers at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York.
If you have any questions or have something in mind for discussion, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Legacy

Rutgers University—Newark Housing

Rutgers University—Newark Housing

2012 — Commercial :: Visual Designer working at GDloft PHL

SYNOPSIS: This was one of my first commercial projects under the guidance of GDloft PHL Studio in Philadelphia, PA with Allan Espiritu as the principal designer. The task was to bring the newly created print design identity for the Rutgers University Newark campus to the web.

Major Skills Applied

Visual Design

User Experience

This project was my first commercial project while working under GDloft PHL. With my growing skillset at the time, I have been responsible for the translation of existing print design and identity to a web experience. Producing the web experience involved in creating an information architecture, new interaction patterns, and visual elements that speak to the original printed collateral.

Problem

INSTITUTIONS of any type are conservative in terms of progress, always playing it safe. Unfortunately, "safe" mixed with "design" means that the project has a high possibility of not being expressive or interesting. However, the approach taken in the design process was to design for a younger audience while being safe and yet remaining refreshing. It was a challenge that GDloft PHL Studio and I have taken for Rutgers University.

The personas below were created from interviewing current students from dorms, and prospective students and their parents from various high schools.

Prospective Students / Parents of Students

A lot of us can empathize with this persona grouping. The prospective students and their parents of universities are looking for direct ways to gather information about dorms, specifically pricing, culture, and room layouts and the ability to transition from research to actionable process of registration.

Pain 2: A lot of times, housing webpages of universities do not mention the culture, which leads to students signing up to live their student life in unknown areas

Current Students

The current students deal with a lot of stress and workload from their academic activities. It was a goal for us to structure the information in the homepage so current students can get the latest news from the webpage without navigating anywhere else.

Pain 1: Information regarding required actions from students are relayed to email messages which a lot of times get lost and/or ignored

Pain 2: Wants access to news and updates regarding the dorms for checking up on utility outages, crime reports, and other community updates

With the given audience of students and their parents the objective of this website was to provide them with an appealing university housing option. The themes for the project were: "transition", "growing", and "welcoming”, chosen as the primary drivers for the experience. On top of appealing to the new students, a dedicated section for current residents was also needed, which will serves a utilitarian purpose, but reinforces the themes from a different angle.

Process

PRIOR existing design with the slogan "YOU COULD BE" was the message that was established for the advertising campaign for Rutgers University of Newark's Housing Department. The visual design needed to be welcoming for both students and parents, and the navigation and experience of the website needed to be equally welcoming as well. With research data gathered from both students and parents, the landing page needed to accommodate for links and content needed to give them three things.

1. Applying and tracking status

2. Cost

3. Maintenance

Aside from those three things, other content did gather interest of users which were considered "one-time" use links. The survey and research was the backbone for the information architecture. Although this project is not impressive in terms of visual design, it did include different aspects of design that I have not had experience with, such as translating concepts and transferring mediums (print to digital), user research, and involvement of developers and managers that are not in the design department. Also, this was my first time dealing with time and budget limitations with an aggressive design and code-freeze schedule. While learning many new things, the main goal of creating a welcoming and cohesive experience to prospective students and their parents of Rutgers Newark was quite an adventure. Developer collaboration was unfortunately an issue due to the developers' talents and being in a restrictive Drupal CMS. This project spurred my passion of understanding computer programming and architecture. After noticing how insufficient some developers could be, I wanted to enable other designers to make their designs a reality in code.